2013年12月大学英语四级考试真题及答案(第三套)

2013年12月大学英语四级考试真题（第三套） Part I Writing （30 minutes） Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay based on the picture below. You should start your essay with a brief account of the increasing use of the mobile phone in people’s life and then explain the consequences of overusing it. You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words. Part II Listening Comprehension （30 minutes） Section A Directions: In this section, you will hear 8 short conversations and 2 long conversations. At the end of each conversation, one or more questions will be asked about what was said. Both the conversation and the questions will be spoken only once. After each question there will be a pause. During the pause, you must read the four choices marked A）, B）, C） and D）, and decide which is the best answer. Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 1 with a single line through the centre. 1. A） He has proved to be a better reader than the woman. B） He has difficulty understanding the book. C） He cannot get access to the assigned book. D） He cannot finish his assignment before the deadline. 2. A） She will drive the man to the supermarket. B） The man should buy a car of his own. C） The man needn’t go shopping every week. D） She can pick the man up at the grocery store. 3. A） Get more food and drinks. C） Tidy up the place. B） Ask his friend to come over. D） Hold a party. 4. A） The talks can be held any day except this Friday. B） He could change his schedule to meet John Smith. C） The first-round talks should start as soon as possible. D） The woman should contact John Smith first. 5. A） He understands the woman’s feelings. B） He has gone through a similar experience. C） The woman should have gone on the field trip. D） The teacher is just following the regulations. 6. A） She will meet the man halfway. C） She will ask David to talk less. B） She is sorry the man will not come. D） She has to invite David to the party. 7. A） Few students understand Prof. Johnson’s lectures. B） Few students meet Prof. Johnson’s requirements. C） Many students find Prof. Johnson’s lectures boring. D） Many students have dropped Prof. Johnson’s class. 8. A） Check their computer files. C） Study a computer program. B） Make some computations. D） Assemble a computer. Questions 9 to 12 are based on the conversation you have just heard. 9. A） It allows him to make a lot of friends. C） It enables him to apply theory to practice. B） It requires him to work long hours. D） It helps him understand people better. 10. A） It is intellectually challenging. B） It requires him to do washing-up all the time. C） It exposes him to oily smoke all day long. D） It demands physical endurance and patience. 11. A） In a hospital. C） At a laundry. B） At a coffee shop. D） In a hotel. 12. A） Getting along well with colleagues. C） Planning everything in advance. B） Paying attention to every detail. D） Knowing the needs of customers. Questions 13 to 15 are based on the conversation you have just heard. 13. A） The pocket money British children get. B） The annual inflation rate in Britain. C） The things British children spend money on. D） The rising cost of raising a child in Britain. 14. A） It enables children to live better. C） It often rises higher than inflation. B） It goes down during economic recession. D） It has gone up 25% in the past decade. 15. A） Save up for their future education. C） Buy their own shoes and socks. B） Pay for small personal things. D） Make donations when necessary. Section B Directions: In this section, you will hear 3 short passages. At the end of each passage, you will hear some questions. Both the passage and the questions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question, you must choose the best answer from the four choices marked A）, B）, C） and D）. Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 1 with a single line through the centre. Passage One Questions 16 to 19 are based on the passage you have just heard. 16. A） District managers. C） Sales directors. B） Regular customers. D） Senior clerks. 17. A） The support provided by the regular clients. B） The initiative shown by the sales representatives. C） The urgency of implementing the company’s plans. D） The important part played by district managers. 18. A） Some of them were political-minded. C） One third of them were senior managers. B） Fifty percent of them were female. D） Most of them were rather conservative. 19. A） He used too many quotations. C） He did not keep to the point. B） He was not gender sensitive. D） He spent too much time on details. Passage Two Questions 20 to 22 are based on the passage you have just heard. 20. A） State your problem to the head waiter. B） Demand a discount on the dishes ordered. C） Ask to see the manager politely but firmly. D） Ask the name of the person waiting on you. 21. A） Your problem may not be understood correctly. B） You don’t know if you are complaining at the right time. C） Your complaint may not reach the person in charge. D） You can’t tell how the person on the line is reacting. 22. A） Demand a prompt response. C） Send it by express mail. B） Provide all the details. D） Stick to the point. Passage Three Questions 23 to 25 are based on the passage you have just heard. 23. A） Fashion designer. C） City planner. B） Architect. D） Engineer. 24. A） Do some volunteer work. C） Work flexible hours. B） Get a well-paid part-time job. D） Go back to her previous post. 25. A） Few baby-sitters can be considered trustworthy. B） It will add to the family’s financial burden. C） A baby-sitter is no replacement for a mother. D） The children won’t get along with a baby-sitter. Section C Directions: In this section, you will hear a passage three times. When the passage is read for the first time, you should listen carefully for its general idea. When the passage is read for the second time, you are required to fill in the blanks with the exact words you have just heard. Finally, when the passage is read for the third time, you should check what you have written. Almost every child, on the first day he sets foot in a school building, is smarter, more curious, less afraid of what he doesn’t know, better at finding and （26）__________, more confident, resourceful （机敏的）, persistent and （27）__________ than he will ever be again in his schooling—or, unless he is very unusual and very lucky, for the rest of his life. Already, by paying close attention to and （28）__________ the world and people around him, and without any school-type （29）__________ instruction, he has done a task far more difficult, complicated and （30）__________ than anything he will be asked to do in school, or than any of his teachers has done for years. He has solved the （31）__________ of language. He has discovered it—babies don’t even know that language exists—and he has found out how it works and learnt to use it （32）__________. He has done it by exploring, by experimenting, by developing his own model of the grammar of language, by （33）__________ and seeing whether it works, by gradually changing it and （34）__________ it until it does work. And while he has been doing this, he has been learning other things as well, including many of the （35）__________ that the schools think only they can teach him, and many that are more complicated than the ones they do try to teach him. Part III Reading Comprehension （40 minutes） Section A Directions: In this section, there is a passage with ten blanks. You are required to select one word for each blank from a list of choices given in a word bank following the passage. Read the passage through carefully before making your choices. Each choice in the bank is identified by a letter. Please mark the corresponding letter for each item on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre. You may not use any of the words in the bank more than once. Questions 36 to 45 are based on the following passage. The mobile phone is a magic device widely used these days. Although it has been nearly 30 years since the first commercial mobile-phone network was launched, advertisers have yet to figure out how to get their ___36___ out to mobile-phone users in a big way. There are 2.2 billion cell-phone users worldwide, a ___37___ that is growing by about 25% each year. Yet spending on ads carried over cell-phone networks last year ___38___ to just $1.5 billion worldwide, a fraction of the $424 billion global ad market. But as the number of eyeballs glued to ___39___ screens multiplies, so too does the mobile phone’s value as a pocket billboard （广告牌）. Consumers are ___40___ using their phones for things other than voice calls, such as text messaging, downloading songs and games, and ___41___ the Internet. By 2010, 70 million Asians are expected to be watching videos and TV programs on mobile phones. All of these activities give advertisers ___42___ options for reaching audiences. During soccer’s World Cup last summer, for example, Adidas used real-time scores and games to ___43___ thousands of fans to a website set up for mobile-phone access. “Our target audience was males aged 17 to 25,” says Marcus Spurrell, Adidas regional manager for Asia. “Their mobiles are always on, always in their pocket—you just can’t ___44___ cell phones as an advertising tool.” Mobile-phone marketing has become as ___45___ a platform as TV, online or print. A） accessing I） increasingly B） amounted J） messages C） approaching K） patiently D） attract L） tiny E） casual M） total F） characters N） violated G） fresh O） vital H） ignore Section B Directions: In this section, you are going to read a passage with ten statements attached to it. Each statement contains information given in one of the paragraphs. Identify the paragraph from which the information is derived. You may choose a paragraph more than once. Each paragraph is marked with a letter. Answer the questions by marking the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2. A Mess on the Ladder of Success A） Throughout American history there has almost always been at least one central economic narrative that gave the ambitious or unsatisfied reason to pack up and seek their fortune elsewhere. For the first 300 or so years of European settlement, the story was about moving outward: getting immigrants to the continent and then to the frontier to clear the prairies （大草原）, drain the wetlands and build new cities. B） By the end of the 19th century, as the frontier vanished, the US had a mild panic attack. What would this energetic, enterprising country be without new lands to conquer? Some people, such as Teddy Roosevelt, decided to keep on conquering （Cuba, the Philippines, etc.）, but eventually, in industrialization, the US found a new narrative of economic mobility at home. From the 1890s to the 1960s, people moved from farm to city, first in the North and then in the South. In fact, by the 1950s, there was enough prosperity and white-collar work that many began to move to the suburbs. As the population aged, there was also a shift from the cold Rust Belt to the comforts of the Sun Belt. We think of this as an old person’s migration, but it created many jobs for the young in construction and health care, not to mention tourism, retail and restaurants. C） For the last 20 years—from the end of the cold war through two burst bubbles in a single decade—the US has been casting about for its next economic narrative. And now it is experiencing another period of panic, which is bad news for much of the workforce but particularly for its youngest members. D） The US has always been a remarkably mobile country, but new data from the Census Bureau indicate that mobility has reached its lowest level in recorded history. Sure, some people are stuck in homes valued at less than their mortgages （抵押贷款）, but many young people—who don’t own homes and don’t yet have families—are staying put, too. This suggests, among other things, that people aren’t packing up for new economic opportunities the way they used to. Rather than dividing the country into the 1 percenters versus （与……相对） everyone else, the split in our economy is really between two other classes: the mobile and immobile. E） Part of the problem is that the country’s largest industries are in decline. In the past, it was perfectly clear where young people should go for work （Chicago in the 1870s, Detroit in the 1910s, Houston in the 1970s） and, more or less, what they’d be doing when they got there （killing cattle, building cars, selling oil）. And these industries were large enough to offer jobs to each class of worker, from unskilled laborer to manager or engineer. Today, the few bright spots in our economy are relatively small （though some promise future growth） and decentralized. There are great jobs in Silicon Valley, in the biotech research capitals of Boston and Raleigh-Durham and in advanced manufacturing plants along the southern I-85 corridor. These companies recruit all over the country and the globe for workers with specific abilities. （You don’t need to be the next Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, to get a job in one of the microhubs （微中心）, by the way. But you will almost certainly need at least a B.A. in computer science or a year or two at a technical school.） This newer, select job market is national, and it offers members of the mobile class competitive salaries and higher bargaining power. F） Many members of the immobile class, on the other hand, 1ive in the America of the gloomy headlines. If you have no specialized skills, there’s little reason to uproot to another state and be the last in line for a low-paying job at a new auto plant or a green-energy startup. The surprise in the census （普查） data, however, is that the immobile workforce is not limited to unskilled workers. In fact, many have a college degree. G） Until now, a B.A. in any subject was a near-guarantee of at least middle-class wages. But today, a quarter of college graduates make less than the typical worker without a bachelor’s degree. David Autor, a prominent labor economist at M.I.T., recently told me that a college degree alone is no longer a guarantor of a good job. While graduates from top universities are still likely to get a good job no matter what their major is, he said, graduates from less-famous scho